


Saudade

by CherFleur



Series: The Blind Dog [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Difference, Betrayal, Child Soldiers, Found Family, Gen, Loss, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21374962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: Senju Tobirama was born to war. It was all he'd ever known, and he could not understand what 'peace' was or how one could want for what they had never known.He lives his whole life and comes to one conclusion: whatever peace is, he was not meant for it.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama & Original Character(s), Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Kagami
Series: The Blind Dog [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/953319
Comments: 72
Kudos: 371





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Here's an early Thanksgiving gift for you guys! This should be read after reading Chapter 17 of Tsundoku, so, be warned if there are any spoilers.
> 
> Let me know if you see any typos or think I should add some tags!

The first steps he’d taken into Uzushio hadn’t been long after Hashirama had been discovered with Madara by their respective fathers.

After Tobirama’s ‘betrayal’ of the only brother he had left.

Even Butsuma was observant enough to know that his sons weren’t quite getting along the way that they had previously. That Hashirama, who was normally so very doting upon his younger siblings, was being uncharacteristically cold towards Tobirama.

It had hurt, feeling Hashirama’s scorn, but it hadn’t exactly been a new sensation for him. His brother had a habit of becoming upset with people and situations that didn’t conform to his wishes. Hashirama didn’t seem to understand that just because he wanted something to be one way that it didn’t automatically become so. It had made their childhoods difficult because Tobirama was significantly stronger willed than Kawarama and Itama had been. He'd lived longer, and so knew that Hashirama wasn't always right. They’d been willing to go along with Hashirama’s games and rules, but Tobirama had needed a _reason _to do such.

A logical one. Not just that Hashirama thought it was best.

He loved his siblings, all of them, to the grave and beyond, but he liked it when things made sense, when they didn’t cause undue problems for the Clan. For _them_.

Being in trouble wasn’t conducive to learning, kept him from his lessons, kept them from being able to _understand_ why things were the way they were.

So perhaps it was the one kindness that Butsuma had ever done for Tobirama, sending him to Uzushiogakure over Hashirama. Not that at the time he’d thought it a kindness, not being sent away to deal with stuffy nobles for a marriage alliance for the very brother he was in a spat with. It was a chance to learn, to mediate, in ways that Hashirama just wasn’t very good at because he saw the world in a very particular way.

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t sat in on before, and despite the way his Uncle was leading negotiations, Tobirama was as attentive as always.

He just… kept getting distracted.

One of the Uzumaki nobles kept sneaking out to meet with someone in the lower district whose chakra felt almost animalistic.

A little girl was climbing the pillars in the garden and jumping off of them into her mother’s arms, sparking joy in both of them.

Children and teenagers were playing a game involving Seals in a courtyard that involved cycling their chakra and adding or removing a kanji to keep it from exploding.

An old man was sitting by a fountain and speaking to anyone who stayed long enough to listen, and every person felt lighter for it when they left.

The ground on which he sat pulsed with age old Seals, the air tasted of nature and salt and every chakra signature within the village was _happier_ than any other he’d ever felt.

For the first time since hearing his brother’s impossible seeming dream, Tobirama had honestly wondered if peace was possible. The Uzumaki had managed it for centuries before the Senju had allied with them, had never started or lived with a feud the way that the Senju and Uchiha had. He wondered if that Village that his brother wanted would reflect the varying levels of honesty and zeal that these people exuded.

So with a newfound, hesitant feeling of perhaps interest and hope, he pushed forward for _understanding_.

How did they do it? What was it about Uzushio that kept them so happy? So free?

He started with the obvious.

Fuuinjutsu.

Of course, Tobirama had already started his studies in the archives of the Senju Compound, but that was nothing compared to the anthology allowed to him in Uzu. Every tidbit that they let him look at he devoured, fascinated by the various styles and branches that he’d never even thought to look into before.

Why would he have thought of Seals to detect jade and limestone, to differentiate minerals? Why would he have thought of Seals that lit up the pathways less traveled to keep the ways clear? Why would he have thought of detection Seals to make sure that soil wasn’t overused? To make sure that every child could be found if lost somewhere in the city?

This wasn’t a village of warriors, the way that Tobirama had always envisioned Hashirama’s dream.

It was a Village of _scholars_ and Tobirama _ached_.

This. This is what he wanted, just boundless chances to create and study, to learn what curve of ink did what, what press of chakra changed results.

He hadn’t thought he was particularly obvious in his interest, since he was notably more studious than his brother. The Senju with him on the mission certainly hadn’t noticed or cared what he was doing outside of his time in the political chambers. As the _model _son, his actions were less monitored, so he was freer to pursue his interests.

But Mito was more observant than he’d accounted for.

“You know, if you wished to learn Fuuinjutsu,” she spoke from behind a fan, a few years older than he with her hair pulled back in a traditional kanzashi. “There are any number of tutors available to you.”

Red eyes blinked at her almost uncomprehendingly and a part of him was still shocked at the way none of the Uzumaki flinched away. How there was none of that instinctive threat assessment every time he looked into a Senju’s eyes in those of the Uzumaki.

They'd never had issue with the Uchiha or even the Yūhi; why would they?

“… What?”

“You are an ally of Uzushio,” she spoke slowly, her chakra a well of clinking thought that turned towards amusement. “The younger brother of my betrothed. We would not deny you access to knowledge known to the general populous.”

“You’d teach all your allies this?” he gestured at the barrier Seal spread out in a step by step explanation in front of him in disbelief. “Anyone who asked?”

“Well, perhaps,” her fan fluttered in front of her face before her head tilted slightly in thought, silk _shushing_ as she stood. “Come with me, Tobirama-kun.”

There’s a natural command in her presence, in her voice, that had him standing before he’d really thought about it. It reminds him that she’s the daughter of the Headman of their Village, that if she hadn’t had been betrothed to Hashirama that she’d have taken over for him. In the Senju, they were patriarchal, and women could do little unless they were single-minded and learned to be dangerous early. Like his cousin Touka, whose father was there leading the negotiations for their Clan.

Touka was terrifying.

Apparently, Mito was a different kind of unnerving.

The length of her long crimson hair waved in front of him below her kanzashi, contrasting sharply with the pale blue of her kimono, the fetters of lace and shimmery white embroidered with tiny silver and red whirls. He thinks that instead of her body, this woman’s weapon is perhaps her mind, in the image she presents so delicately with fan and silk.

A flicker in his senses that tells him that the noble man is sneaking out to be with his lover again. That more children were playing that Sealing game. That the little girl who so delighted in her mother’s arms was asleep for a nap and her mother was plucking strings on a koto. That the old man at the fountain was momentarily alone, but content to be so because there was always someone who would come along.

To his absolute surprise, Mito led him to a balcony that oversaw the lower sects of Uzushio, the jade pillars, red paint and sea glass glimmering in the light of the sun. Water refracted in a kaleidoscope across the ramshackle shops closer to the shoreline, and both children and sea birds could be heard screaming. The roofs were painted and decorated with seashells and iridescent glass art; lightning rods coated in Seals bordering each district.

Houses on stilts that stood taller than a man the closer to the water they were, poles and stanchions painted and carved with supporting Fuuinjutsu.

Barkers were calling out for their wares. People, both higher class and lower, were hopping to and fro on the rooftops to get to destinations that the busy streets would have hindered, timewise. 

All he sensed was contentment, the farther away from the main compound out he felt, the more encompassing the feeling.

He didn’t think he understood it.

But.

Tobirama liked it.

He hoped he could remember it with this clarity when he returned in a few weeks to the Senju Compound. What his brother’s before impossible seeming dream of peace could be, this vision of what Tobirama could strive for.

“If you ask anyone out in the street about a Seal they are working on,” the young woman spoke, tapping a painted nail on the lacquered ribs of her fan. “They will explain it to you in great detail. If you understand is not what the care for, but that you ask.”

Violet eyes looked down at him from the corner of her eye.

“That you understand will be what makes you ask.”

_Ah._

Tobirama understood.

If he hadn’t had an interest in Fuuinjutsu, why would he ask? If he wasn’t an ally of Uzushio, why would he be allowed to freely walk about amongst its people?

How long had the Senju been allied with Uzushio, and how few had asked any questions _about _them? Had any of his ancestors wanted to be taught, or had they all simply wanted the finished product?

Considering the state of the Clan archives, he was pretty sure it was the latter over the former.

“Mito-sama, may I…” a clear jump of anticipation skittered through his pulse, making his pale features twitch with more life than was usual.

“Be excused, Tobirama-kun,” she seemed amused, something pleased sliding into her cool, canny chakra. “Do tell me what you learn while away.”

It seemed logical, to follow his first instinct and find the old man at the fountain, to see what he would be willing to teach.

Before he got there, he’d already noticed that some children had gathered around the man, felt his senses sliding off of other Sensors in a way he’d never felt before coming here. They’d sent him an almost cordial ping that he’d hesitantly, uncertainly returned, receiving more warmth and amusement than anything else.

There were very few Senju with Sensing abilities like Tobirama’s, most used the Earth to feel things. It was more common in the Yamanaka and the Nara to sense chakra in the way he did. Of course, intellectually he’d known that the Uzumaki were also known for their Sensory abilities, but feeling the near routine seeming greeting had been…

It had been nice.

Settling down into the group of children – some around his age, which was strange – he listened to the toothless old man who was blind in one eye with salty orange hair and pale lined skin. The skin of his earlobes was stretched with heavy metal earrings, old, faded ink dotting the cartilage and down his neck under the rough spin of his clothes. They were roughened by age rather than by anything else, had perhaps once been of a higher quality than its appearance would say.

He was telling a story.

“ – and the Kaguya Clan were cursed with the grieving madness of the moon goddess from which they descended,” he told them, a lilt of something foreign in his words, some rougher dialect. “Some were so beleaguered by the weight of her mind that they tore the very bones from their skin to silence her whispers.”

A fascinating story he’d never heard before, a way of explaining the way that the Hyuuga, Uzumaki and Kaguya had split apart centuries before. The Uchiha were said to be a split off of the Hyuuga, but Tobirama wasn’t sure he believed that.

When the man finished this chapter of the tale, the other children ran off, talking excitedly of the Great Beings and the madness in the world outside.

They were so… sheltered, here.

Tobirama hesitated despite his eagerness to know more, to ask for clarity on parts of the story that seemed to be common knowledge to the children of Uzu. To ask about the Seals he’d come for teaching about in the first place but had him questioning what a place with unbroken history might know. He had so many questions, but he wasn’t sure how to ask.

“Well,” the old man spoke again, single blue eye looking at him kindly. “Come on then, you look like you have questions, moon child.”

_Moon child?_

Tobirama had never been as precociously boisterous as his brothers, yet he’d never been hesitant, and yet in the face of wizened kindness, he felt… uncertain.

“Where does the water in the fountain come from?” he blurted out before he could help himself, sliding closer as a wrinkled hand patted the stone of the bench beneath the old man, inviting him to sit. “I don’t see a mechanism for it to draw in water and propel it up.”

Surprise had the man blinking before he laughed, amused, pleased.

“A good question,” that rough, older voice spoke with humor. “A good one. Now, what do you know about displacement Seals?”

Tobirama learned that he liked asking questions.

He’d never been allowed, before.

Tobirama was ten, and he wanted to know _everything._

~*~

When he returned from Uzu, it was as if Hashirama had never been angry.

Like he’d forgotten the hurtful things he’d said to Tobirama, as if he’d completely wiped the incident from his mind.

Oddly enough, that hurt more than anything, that he could change so swiftly. That he hadn’t mattered enough for there to be resolution between them, rather than Hashirama deciding that being upset wasn’t worth the effort. That _he _wasn’t worth the effort.

There was still that resentment lingering in his chakra, buried beneath a veneer of cheer and dismissal, but it was still there.

Tobirama could never tell what was worse; Hashirama forgetting that he could feel that, or not caring that he could.

As always, Touka was a brisk, steady presence at his side when his brother carelessly brushed off the issues between them. She was the most dangerous woman in the Clan after Tobirama’s mother had passed, and he could still remember how she’d taught him to hold his sword.

“Did you enjoy your time away?” she asked him as she watched him move through forms to center himself. “Otou-san says you spent much of your time out in the city and with Mito-sama.”

“Yes,” he didn’t pause, though something strange expanded in his chest. “I did.”

_Part of me wishes I could have stayed longer._

~*~

The next time there was a group headed to Uzushio, Tobirama volunteered. And every time after that.

He spent time with Mito going over some of the matrices he’d come up with while away, brainstorming with the sharp young woman. There was an intuition in her for Fuuinjutsu that he didn’t have, but perhaps it was just something that came with being Uzumaki.

Other times, he spent with the old man at the fountain, listening to the tales of history with children his age and younger. Once those tales were over, he’d discuss practical Fuuinjutsu and its adaptations until it was time to eat or rest. Sometimes passersby would enter the discussions as well, the deep wells of slowly becoming familiar chakra swirling with interest.

At the insistence of the old man, Haruta, he let the children of Uzushio drag him around showing him the sights of their Village. He let them teach him the little customs and courtesies that were common knowledge to the people, the way that the Sensors watched over them all.

It was nice, if frivolous and flabbergasting.

Did not, however, prepare him for the quarterly festival in any way shape or form, but what little he’d gleaned kept him from falling into shock.

“What is, no, _who _is that?” he questioned an older woman, hand pointed towards the sea. “It’s so _loud_.”

“Loud…?” recognition dawned on the woman’s dark features and she laughed brightly. “The Nagisa are coming!”

“Nagisa?” someone echoed.

“Oi, Meiko, get the stalls stocked!”

“Tetsu, Tetsu, bring up that leather from Kumo! We’ve got sheaths to make!”

“Do you think they got the Salty Roe I asked for?”

“Of course. Nagisa never forget!”

“Did you unpack that shipment from Suna?”

Laughter exploded around him, and the normally spirited people of the market got even _more _energetic, chakra a frenetic swirl around them. Nobody seemed particularly interested in answering his question after he’d asked it, so he took himself and his curiosity outside of the busy streets.

“Who are the Nagisa?” he asked, bemused at the sudden hype. “And why are they such a big deal?”

“It’s not often that they all come into port except around festival time,” Haruta told him where he sat organizing metal and glass beads. “Usually they’ll send back a few boats with shipments of fish and goods, but for you to have felt them from this distance means the whole fleet’s coming in.”

“I… excuse me, did you say _fleet_?”

Lines crinkled the old man’s face as he smiled, eyes sparkling with amusement, the heavy Uzumaki chakra a blanket of reassurance.

“Why don’t you have one of the kids show you Turtle Beach? It’s where they come in, tradition you know. You’ll never see another sight quite like the Nagisa on the horizon.”

He was right.

It was a sight.

Glittering vessels coated in coral and other sea life burst across the horizon, the pressure of sound as hundreds of voices all sang the same song leading them in. Sails painted in no particular pattern that might denote they were all from the same trade but beautiful murals of things Tobirama had never seen before. Mountains that looked to be underwater, great flying beasts with brilliant feathers, a floating island in the sky. Flowers twined together and Seals that glimmered like starlight.

Figureheads of dragons, sharks, fish, birds and various Bijuu dotted the horizon with brilliant color, painted and carved.

Nets were spread between different vessels at different heights, weaved of chakra and some kind of plant life. People walked back and forth on the lines between ships with ease, leaping gracefully through the air from one place to the next.

In the water below, people were swimming, painting seals and art on the hulls over previous work that had faded.

Water and Wind slid from underneath the sea and behind the sails, a graceful, cohesive dance done by a thousand people working together seamlessly. Whales breached by the people under the water, keeping pace, singing loudly and catching on the chakra that enshrouded the ships. Flags and scarves and various banners flew from masts and booms as they swung around, glittering in the sunlight. Chimes and weathervanes spun and clicked together; glass carved by the sea refracted arches of light on the water.

Children were practicing jutsu of the likes he’d never seen before, tossing water and fire and lightning amongst themselves while adults casually went about their business.

The air, which had been salty and briny, was now inundated with spices and smoke, drawing the eye to the various cooking apparatus setup on decks. Nothing about this massive conglomeration of ships looked uniform, nothing about it looked pristine or spartan. It didn’t not look like a fighting force.

Even if there were ships and boats that had metal shafts stabbing off the sides and forward ends meant for ramming, this was not a military force.

It was beautiful.

The chakra, though.

The _chakra_.

Blinking rapidly, he took a shaking, bracing breath only to have the air knocked right out of him in the next instant.

These Nagisa had Sensors and they reached out much more briskly than the Uzumaki ones had on his trips here. They reached for him when the Uzumaki had never done so, more active than reactive when they called to him.

Waves broke against bulkheads and songs pressed into the air, and Sensors he’d never met before welcomed him with open arms. Laughter, ease, contentment, _happiness_, playfulness, a bulwark of strength from which to draw. So many chakras and the majority weren’t directly related, though there were a few family groups amongst them. They didn’t feel quite like Uzumaki, but they also _did _feel like Uzumaki.

_Welcome, Little Brother, _they seemed to say. _The Sea welcomes you._

He didn’t know these people, he couldn’t see them in any detail, and yet he felt comforted in ways he hadn’t quite known existed. The chakra natures out there on the water breathed together in ways that he wasn’t sure that humans were supposed to experience.

“I have to go,” he rasped out, red eyes wide as he stumbled away from the beach, ignoring the calls of the Uzumaki he left behind. “I _have _to_ go_.”

By the time he’d gotten into his assigned rooms he was shaking, but the breadth of the Uzumaki chakra between him and the shoreline had muffled the Sensory feedback.

He couldn’t know this.

He couldn’t know that something like this existed.

Tobirama didn’t want to be broken apart again, as he’d been at the loss of each of his brothers. It was hard enough leaving the peace of Uzushio and returning to the War with the Uchiha, to the flinching of his own Clan and the dismissal of his brother. How could he go back to the unbelievable cruelties of War, of death and the battlefield, when he knew that all this time, the Senju could have had _that_?

How could he go back to killing, to ending songs and shuttering chakra, when there was the eye of a storm on the horizon and it called for him?

“Tobirama-kun?”

Mito.

Shit, Mito. She couldn’t see him like this. The woman might be something like a friend and his brother’s betrothed but to have her see him shaken like this, shivering on the floor was not what Tobirama wanted.

Touka, whom he trusted, could see this.

Hashirama, whom he loved, could see this.

No one else.

“Just a moment, Mito-sama,” he returned, voice under iron control learned under his father’s hand. “I’ll be right with you.”

Cycling his chakra through his system to clear out the stress hormones, he stood, taking deep, careful breathes. A disbelieving hand lifted to pass over his face once, relieved and surprised at the lack of dampness there.

When he reached the shoji and slid them open, she regarded him over her fan clinically. They were of a height now, instead of him being several inches shorter than she was, and considering how tall Senju were, he wasn’t about to stop. The top of her hair was pulled back in an ornate headdress riddled with Seals he knew she’d designed herself, denoting her station in Uzushio. The lacquer on the fan housed chakra and Fuuinjutsu as well, tasting like wind on the back of his tongue.

She snapped her fan shut, chakra a pool of contemplation, tapped her chin twice, before she snapped it open again.

“I would like you to accompany me to the Festival of Light,” she spoke elegantly, formally. “But perhaps you have fallen ill.”

Ah.

His heart juddered in his chest.

“No,” his voice was softer than he meant it in the face of her kindness. Of the fear this peaceful place had instilled in him. “No, I would be honored to escort you, Mito-sama.”

What was one more crack in his soul for the happiness of the people he cared about?

Tobirama would adjust. He’d adapt. He always had.

As a Sensor so powerful he had yet to stop growing born into a Clan that didn’t know what to do with him, he should have gone mad. Every flutter of chakra from person to ant had been a distraction, and yet he still lived.

As an albino in a world that not that long ago culled those born with deformities or abnormalities his days had been numbered. The sun was so harsh and his health so fickle as a child, and his skin had been so thin, but he’d survived.

He’d learned how to lock himself into the chakra of those closest to him, to never lose sight of that in the wide, wondrous world.

He’d learned how to cover his skin and to circulate his chakra, how to harden himself with chakra to strengthen his feeble body.

This too, would pass.

So, dressed in his formal kimono he went with the Uzumaki procession down to the festival grounds that evening. He anchored himself in Mito, let his senses latch onto her over the chaos around them as he felt those Nagisa closer and closer.

When one of them stepped into the pagoda they were situated in, it was like the wilderness had walked into the city. The man looked completely out of place with his black skin and white dreadlocks decorated with gems and beads and twisting metal clasps. Seals coated his skin liberally, a silvery sheen of chakra that was unmarred by the scars that crossed ebony flesh. He wore no shirt beneath a wide open sleeveless haori of brilliant red that was belted at his waist with metal coins jangling above fitted trousers and tabi toed boots.

At his side he had a katana and a wakizashi with worn hilts and old tsuba, rough hands that knew how to hold them.

Tobirama itched for his own sword.

“Yo, Mito-chan,” he said, voice harsh with salt, grin literally sharp and eyes brilliant, startling green. “Found ya some o’ that silk ya was wantin’.”

Beside Tobirama, the young woman smiled, pulling down her demure fan as the tall, broadly muscled sailor sat before them on the provided cushion.

“Hello, Shirogane-san,” she greeted in turn, playfulness and pleasure sliding through her chakra. “I’m glad. I have some Suna sake for you in turn.”

“Ooh, nice, that.”

They bantered back and forth until Tobirama could feel more of the Nagisa getting closer, these ones children by the feel of it.

One was a Sensor.

He was too well trained to twitch, but Shirogane glance back easily to see the children and grinned at them brightly. They all gave a war cry at having been seen in their passable sneaking around, probably to find an adult to ambush.

“Hey!” the man chided when one kid climbing on him as the table was jostled. “What did we say ‘bout mainlanders?”

“They’s fragile,” was intoned by each child drolly in sync. “Soft hands.”

Huh. What?

“Clan’s are messy and pol’t’c’l nigh’mares,” one little girl said proudly, likely parroting some adult or another. “Dey’s got silly stan’ards.”

“Well,” Shirogane spoke wryly, throwing a grin at the ever-so amused Mito and bewildered Tobirama. “Ya ain’t wrong.”

“He’s Water,” the little Sensor girl said, pointing at him imperiously, making Tobirama blink. “An ‘is han’s are sword hands!”

That all-encompassing acceptance built up pressure behind his sternum, but it wasn’t nearly so overwhelming as when he’d been bombarded with the Nagisa. The calming presence of Mito at his side, steady and cunning, kept him from being swept away in the current they pulled along with them. As those brilliantly green eyes looked at him with consideration curled at his eyes and amusement at the corners of his lips, Tobirama breathed.

An important task, breathing.

“Hmm, so he does,” Shirogane leaned forward and tilted his head, hair sliding and clinking over his shoulder distractingly. “Wanna spar, cousin?”

It was distracting, seeing this brightly patterned man in front of him, with his similar hair and opposite dark skin, weaving electric and liquid chakra charged inside him calmly.

The offer caused something unfamiliar to unfurl in his stomach.

“… Cousin?” spilled from his lips as his eyes caught on Seals he couldn’t read. “We aren’t related.”

“Hah!” the large man threw his head back with a laugh, joy practically leaping from him to prickle heat in Tobirama’s cheeks. “Go back far ‘nough, we’s all ‘lated, gaki.”

_What did he just call me?_

~*~

Tobirama got his ass handed to him.

Sure, Shirogane had been relatively _nice _about it, but he’d still completely and totally outclassed him as a swordsman. It was the first time since he was eight years old and Butsuma had put a katana in his hand that he’d been bested.

For the first time, it was occurring to him that while he might be a _shinobi_, he was not quite a swordsman. Without his jutsu and his other weapons, he wasn’t nearly as competent as he’d always thought he’d been. As he’d so very viciously made himself into so that his brother wouldn’t have to bury him, so that he’d never have to feel that moment of anguish as Hashirama lost the last of them.

“Yer pretty good,” the man said easily, not even out of breath as Tobirama panted on his knees, hands trembling from shock absorption. “Fo’ a mainlander, ya ain’t bad.”

Red eyes flickered up to meet green, and Tobirama swallowed against the feeling of soft fondness over steely determination that stood before him.

“You destroyed me,” he managed after another moment of breathing, heart trembling with leftover adrenaline. “In less than two minutes.”

“Yeah,” was agreed as the man squatted down and unexpectedly picked him up like a child. “But I’ve tangled with Senju ‘afore, an ya better’n ‘em.”

It had been over a decade since someone had picked him up like this, rather than supported him after training or a skirmish. For the first time in a long time, he felt small.

That stormfront on open water of chakra surrounded him. Gentle, caring, deep. Willing to reach out and pull him into its orbit with just a word, like Tobirama was someone that was worthy of unconditional appreciation.

His mother had felt like this sometimes, before she’d fallen ill.

“When have you fought the Senju?”

“Hmm, damn near 30 years ago now, in’t it?”

“_What_?!”

How old _was_ this guy?

~*~

Mito arranged for his schedule to include training with Shirogane, the traitor.

He got her a new fan with detailed peacocks embroidered on it with golden threads and skillfully painted, as a return gift.

Tobirama was glad that his brother was marrying someone he could call a friend, rather than anyone else. There were very few people that he could see taking over the Clan the way that Mito could take charge of most things.

It was a good thought.

Now, if only Shirogane didn’t outclass him so totally.

If Tobirama didn’t miss the rough hand messing up his hair, rasping against the backs of his own hands as he fixed his grip. The way that strong arms would lift him with ease, and he’d wake warm and taken care of, saturated in the chakra of the Nagisa on one of their ships. The bedrolls smelled like salt and smoke, strangely comforting and soothing, making him loath to rise when normally he was hard to keep abed.

Senju Butsuma loved all of his children in his own way. Tobirama knew this better than Hashirama did, knew that his brother had needed words whereas he could Sense the emotion.

His father had loved him.

But Nagisa Shirogane was growing to love him in that more direct way than the distance Butsuma had always cultivated. Shirogane didn’t fear the loss of someone he loved in the same way that the Senju did, he didn’t limit himself by potential grief.

None of the Nagisa did. The Uzumaki.

It was a thought that rolled in Tobirama’s head, highlighting points in Hashirama’s dream. Lifting his desires once again for it to become something like reality, for more than just Uzushio to sooth the desire for _more_. For this fabled, unknown peace.

For now, he would content himself with the respite that were his trips to Uzu, but eventually, he hoped to show those here who had given him hope, that perhaps _he _might have a home to show them someday.

Tobirama was thirteen.

~*~

Tobirama for the first time in his life he had feared his brother.

It had… it hadn’t been intentional.

He hadn’t _meant _to kill Izuna. Izuna was usually a wily, tricky little shit who could keep up with all of Tobirama’s new techniques in a way that his own Clan couldn’t. On occasion the Uchiha would yell at him for breaking the rules of chakra manipulation and his chakra would flicker with something like fondness.

Part of Tobirama had selfishly, quietly, hoped that he’d be able to be friends with Izuna in that dream of their brothers’.

Yet Izuna hadn’t moved as quickly as he’d expected, hadn’t parried.

There had been an injury that had slowed him, not one from Tobirama’s hand, but one that was fresh enough that the Uchiha had flinched. Had widened Sharingan eyes to stare at Tobirama’s own shocked features over his shoulder as blade pierced flesh in a too familiar manner.

His chakra had flickered with regret and resignation, with wistful fondness and apology.

And then he’d died.

A warm, familiar chakra that Tobirama had stood across fields of bodies from for as long as he could remember. They had gone through the clumsy stages of War together, he and Izuna, and yet, it was ultimately the cause of someone else’s wounding that he had fallen to his blade.

Madara’s grief and rage had corroded against his senses, but it was Hashirama’s sudden, cutting desire to strike him down that had gotten Tobirama moving. It was like the snapping of strings of a biwa wrapping around his throat, screaming in discord.

When they returned to the Compound, Mito had sent him away.

Had taken one look at him, covered in the blood of someone he’d hoped to be a friend to, to eventually not need to cross blades with, and echo of chakra ghosting away flickering at the edges of his Senses. She had looked at him where Hashirama had not, taken his face in her hands, the fuuinjutsu tattoos of the Nagisa tingling on his cheeks as her chakra touched them.

“Go,” she told him calmly, quietly; her chakra as hard and cutting as diamonds with her resolve. “I will keep the peace here. You go. The ocean calls you.”

And he’d gone, because the cold coil of being crushed by Hashirama’s chakra was too much, and Tobirama had learned what it was not to suffer needlessly.

That there were better ways out there, than letting Hashirama’s hate punish him for things that he could not change.

When he reached the gates to Uzushiogakure, the great, ancient fuuinjutsu that sealed the doors opened to him, humming welcomingly against his Senses. Familiar chakra, other Sensors he’d gotten to know, reached out to him, tinged with worry at the ragged edges of him. He reached back in greeting but no more.

They were not who he was looking for.

The Nagisa rarely came full bore into port in Uzu, didn’t want to take up the docks or float so close to the shore when the open water freed them. Tobirama reached out into the ocean, farther and farther as he leapt over familiar glittering rooftops, scattering seagulls and giggling children as he did.

Joy and curiosity and mischief was the foundation of the Uzumaki, of the peoples of Uzushio, and it was a balm when he still stung harshly from his brother’s rejection. His murderous _rage_. Still it wasn’t –

The Nagisa reached back, an amorphous chorus of a thousand bringing the dawn bubbling in his chest to burn away the ice of grief within him. Izuna would never burn brightly again, would never throw playful insults hidden under a scowling face, would never pick at Tobirama’s techniques again. He would not call the retreat in Madara’s stead when the man was caught up in Hashirama, would not let the Clans rest where Tobirama could not.

All that was left of him, was the fuzzy reflection left in Tobirama’s Senses of regret, of a candle burning wick too fast and being smothered by the wax.

Tobirama had raced across the water from the beach he’d first seen the fleet from, and when the first ship he saw was captained by Shirogane, he was unsurprised and grateful in equal measure. Ever since taking him under his wing, the older swordsman had unquestioningly decided to treat him as a child of his own.

Even if Tobirama was not at all like Akane, it was a blessing to be so regarded by someone such as this.

Strong dark arms had slid over his shoulders, one hand pulling his face down to press against the man’s shoulder while the other held him tight. Reassuringly. As always, it was as if Shirogane was a cyclone that was born of laughter and lightning, twining around the river rapids of Tobirama’s own chakra.

“We gotcha,” his deep voice rumbled as Tobirama’s trembling hands reached up to grab that familiar, worn haori. “We’ll keep ya afloat, Amatsubu-kun.”

They had joked, wild Akane and the rest of the Nagisa, that they should call _Tobirama_ Shiro instead of Shirogane. The man himself had laughed but shaken his head, twisting the then sixteen-year-old Senju’s head this way and that to study the new seals on his face.

He had put them there himself, with steady hand and steadier heart, bleeding his love into the marks for Tobirama to carry with him. They were to keep his fragile skin from burning so easily and gave him some immunity to fire, though jutsu still burned him just the same.

“The Storm brings the Rain,” the man had said with ease, wisdom in kind green eyes. “But the Rain is more than the Storm.”

And so, they called him Amatsubu, a name all for himself born of the people who had welcomed him with open arms. Who had accepted his fears and taught him how to overcome them, who had seen his faults and taught him how to accept them. They had seen Tobirama, and they hadn’t wanted to change him.

They did not call him cold and unfeeling. They did not call him an omen.

He was just Tobirama, just Amatsubu.

“Amatsubu-kun!” Akane threw herself at his other side, bringing a grunt from his lips as the new, startling Seal on her arm brushed against his hara and sent a jolt of _other _through his system. “Tell me who I gotta stab!”

Tobirama smiled into old cloth, taking a deep breath as pale dreadlocks and beads bumped into his happuri and over his own pale hair. The taste of the sea, the feel of creaking sails, the dependability of the heart pounding steadily around him.

“Akane-chan,” was rumbled exasperatedly from Shirogane as his heavy hand rubbed over Tobirama’s head with affection. “Why’s everythin’ gotta be stabbin’?”

“Why _not_ stabbin’?” she countered, as usual. “Nii-san says I c’n stab people if’n I gotta.”

“Nii-san’s questionable wisdom aside,” the man said ruefully, shifting an arm to lift his daughter on one shoulder and Tobirama on the other. “Let’s settle up inside, yeah?”

Nagisa Akane was a few years older than Tobirama, but for someone with Uzumaki blood that could mean any number of things for how she aged. She was nearly the same height as him, tall for a woman with height inherited from her father, with burgundy hair braided and beaded, bright silver eyes in skin lighter than her father’s by a full shade. The woman was whipcord thin with long muscles, her chakra a full gale pushing a heavy storm cloud in whatever direction took her fancy.

Akane was a wild thing with sharp teeth and bright eyes that looked at questions and sought answers in the strangest places.

Her hands were quick, her footwork a mess that half looked like drunken dancing, and she had taken one look at him being taught by her father and laughed brightly. She had slung her arm over his shoulders, still a little taller than him then, and welcomed him to the family by challenging him to a spar.

Tobirama had lost, badly, when they used kenjutsu.

Everything else, though, he won and that seemed to delight her to no end.

Her words were “The bes’ kind of friends’re the ones tha’ do what you can’t!” and Tobirama had stared at her incredulously while her father had looked rueful but proud.

That was practically the motto of the Nagisa, as they picked up anyone anywhere who wanted to belong with them. New skills didn’t actually matter, as long as the person wasn’t malicious or out for someone else in the family’s blood.

Tobirama let himself be tossed up into the complicated hammock that hung from several different anchor points in Shirogane’s room. Grabbing one of the blankets even as he chucked his armor over the side to thud on the deck while Akane climbed up. The hammock creaked alarmingly as it always did when Shirogane’s bulk slid into it, but the Seals woven into the fabric and anchors in wood held it in place. The man lay overtop them, a heavy weight with thick tattooed arms wrapping around Akane and Tobirama before he rolled.

“How’s ‘bout a lil’ nap, eh?”

Tired, so very weary of the heart and accepted, held by someone who was still stronger in some ways, surrounded by people who _cared_, Tobirama smiled slightly.

As the ship swayed beneath them, rocking like the beloved arms of his fondly remembered mother, he was assuaged.

Someday, perhaps, Hashirama would forgive him.

Someday, perhaps, Tobirama wouldn’t need him to.

~*~

Peace.

Tobirama had tasted other people’s peace over the years and yet he didn’t think he really understood it. He knew the solace of the Uzushio libraries, the kindness of curiosity there. He knew the acceptance of the Nagisa, the joy of being seen and not found wanting.

But peace?

What was it, to not fight anymore?

Watching Hashirama sign the treaty with the embittered, grief drained Madara, Tobirama could honestly say that he still didn’t understand it.

Was it giving up, like Madara had done in the face of his Clan’s destruction at the hands of his childhood best friend? Was it the solid acceptance of Hashirama, who finally had so closely in his grasp the dream he had been _fighting _for? Was it the way that Touka could walk the streets without her naginata in hand, her face less tense? Was it Mito crouched in front of children that had the chance to know life without bloodshed, smiling when they studied her lovely fan?

What was peace?

He didn’t know it, didn’t know the shape of it, the face of it.

Yet, he craved it.

Because then, the fighting would be over. Then, perhaps, _he _could have a dream.

~*~

There were few Uchiha that he got along with, and yet more of them spoke to him than the people of his own Clan did. They did not fear his inauspicious red eyes, because to them, the red eyes were what family wore. It reminded him of the few red eyed people he’d met in Uzushio who had looked at him as if wondering how they were related; except _they _had never been wary of him at all.

The Uchiha as a whole seemed to be interested in people of strength, people of competence. It meant that Touka was often found flocked by men and women who got starry eyed by the way she bared her teeth at them. It meant that Madara’s entire regard to Hashirama wasn’t quite as strange as he’d always thought it was, when Hashirama himself had little interest in fleshly matters.

Hashirama was the only one in the Senju who could defeat Madara without the amount of effort it would have taken for Tobirama.

Truly, he wouldn’t want such regard from Madara, though. Every time he looked at him there was an echo of rage and grief lodged deep in the inferno of his chakra, a burning, choking thing. It hadn’t eased, though the acid of it had, replaced by the ache of loneliness rather than the sourness of revenge.

Tobirama had apologized to Madara a few weeks after they’d signed the treaty. He had taken Old Haruta’s advice and bowed his head to the floor in seiza and spoken his words as his chakra had expressed his own grief.

“In his own way,” he had said stiffly, unsure as always with expressing his emotions. “He was my friend. My equal. It was not my intention to end his life that day.”

There was silence, that roiling celestial body of chakra a melting pot of confliction. Then the sound of cloth _shushing _together and a faint vibration as Madara knelt on the floor in front of him and pressed a hand to his shoulder.

“Sit up,” the man had said, voice a little hoarse. Like he was swallowing the flames that built up within him. “I’ll not speak to the back of your head.”

Doing so, he watched Madara with wary eyes, watched those dark, lined before his time eyes study Tobirama’s own form.

The kimono he was wearing had been a gift from one of the old women of the Nagisa, the deep blue cloth heavy enough to be worn in windy weather but spun with seals that kept it cooler. Silver and red spilled embroidery at the collar and sleeves, dripping down the front in roiling waves and sharp lines like those on his face. His hakama were matched well, soft and comfortable, easy to move in. The cloth was saturated with their chakra and he wore it like a shield that others could not see, could not Sense.

He wore no happuri and bore no blade.

“How many brother’s have you lost?” Madara asked him, dark eyes unfathomable as that crackling, unending rage twisted inside him.

_Three_.

“Two,” because Hashirama yet lived, even if he did not regard him the same anymore. “My younger brothers, just before you and Hashirama met.”

Hashirama hadn’t held him as dear as he once did since they were children and Tobirama had listened to the orders of their father. They hadn’t quite been able to speak to one another since Tobirama’s blade had found its home in Uchiha Izuna.

Tobirama might love his brother dearly, desperately, but he had lost him just the same.

To his brother, Madara had filled that spot. The one to be trusted and sought for advice and counsel over the place that was becoming their village.

He mourned, he was perhaps a bit resentful, but there was no changing Hashirama. He was as the trees he grew, planted and unmoving without ripping it from the ground to die.

“I have lost three,” suddenly, Madara looked old. Much older than he was. “My older brothers who were meant to bear this mantle, and my younger, who I was supposed to protect.”

“Izuna was wounded when we fought,” Tobirama said quietly, his brows furrowed, his heart beating perhaps a touch to quickly. “He should have been able to dodge.”

“Yes,” Madara agreed, rage burning white hot and bright for a long moment, pressure that Tobirama’s water nature fluctuated against. “Yes, he should have.”

Black eyes flickered red, and for the first time in his life, Tobirama did not look away.

“A piece of me hates you, Tobirama. A piece of me wants to rend the flesh from your bones and burn you until you blacken and pale to ash,” he lifted a large hand and wiped it over his face wearily. “But I know that the fault lies with the Uchiha. I know that Izuna too, considered you a worthy equal and opponent.”

Tobirama swallowed thickly, hands twitching in his lap.

“I’m sorry.”

Madara sighed, black fading into sight once again.

“Go, Tobirama. I cannot forgive you, but I do not _blame _you.”

And so he’d went. It was… not quite unexpected, the civility that followed.

Uchiha Kagami, however, he had not expected.

Nearly a decade his junior, the teen had taken to following Tobirama around. Appointed himself as something of an aide when it came to deal with the Uchiha Clan members who couldn’t see past the corpses at his feet.

Despite what some might think, Tobirama wasn’t ignorant that he was attractive. He’d had a few dalliances in his time, though mostly in the safety of Uzushio and the compassion of its people.

It was simply… Kagami’s regard surprised him.

Afterwards, Kagami had started to show up wherever Tobirama went, a quiet, curious shadow. Likely, Madara had tasked him with keeping an eye on him, but after perhaps a month Madara had seen Kagami with Tobirama and seemed surprised.

The teen had shrugged with a smile, long lashed eyes crinkling under riotous curls.

Tobirama had felt as Kagami had gained regard for him, as curiosity turned into fondness. Had echoed it in his own quiet way, because it was so rare to find friends within their two Clans. He had felt it, when fondness turned to affection, when affection had started to change into infatuation.

Had cursed the way his own chakra had sung lowly with hesitant hope and interest, glad that no one else was paying him much mind amongst the Clan. Touka gave him the side-eye from her cloud of dangerous Uchiha admirers, but she had yet to approach him as such. Likely, she was wondering what he would do, if anything, and if she needed to meddle into his business.

Touka’s meddling tended to end in bloody ways, so he’d rather avoid it.

When the festival time came and Hashirama and Madara were caught up with talks with the Sarutobi and the Hyuuga, Mito took him and Kagami in their stead. Kagami was Madara’s cousin via his mother’s side of the family and as it was he was the man’s Heir, just as Tobirama had been Hashirama’s. The toddling form of his niece hanging off her mother’s kimono sleeve was a relief.

A weight was lifting off his shoulders every time he sensed that young growing chakra stumbling about curiously.

Perhaps this was peace.

~*~

Mito shooed them away when she noticed Tobirama get distracted. He could feel the Nagisa inside his Senses, other Sensors pinging him joyfully as they slowly felt him enter their own range.

Instinct led him to that first beach, covered in children as it was as the wind curled off the water and the fleet crossed the horizon. His pale hair flickered at the corners of his vision in the breeze and he felt his tension fade away at the grand sight of them, still taken with it after all these years.

Kagami’s chakra behind him swelled with awe as well, but it was dwarfed by sudden desire and Tobirama blinked in surprise. Turning to look at the younger man he watched him stare at him with Sharingan eyes, flushed slightly perhaps from the sunlight or something else. The sparking heat of Kagami’s dual natured chakra was a curious, hungry thing.

_Oh._

Clearing his throat, Tobirama looked away.

This was… different.

“Come on,” he grunted, ignoring the rise of heat in his own cheeks, cursing the guard he didn’t have within Uzushio. “Let’s go greet them.”

While his own feelings were perhaps a little confused on the matter, emotions terribly messy things that he preferred not to deal with, Tobirama wasn’t _against_ the feelings Kagami had for him. Or he for _him._

Perhaps it would have been different if he hadn’t been in battle with him, seen the towering form of Susanoo burn from his eyes in what he learned was grief at the loss of his mother. Perhaps he would have ignored it if Kagami didn’t tend to spend hours listening to him ramble about advanced chakra theory and fuuinjutsu with indulgent fondness. If he didn’t ask questions of his own from time to time or point out some ridiculously simple thing that Tobirama had overcomplicated.

Perhaps if Kagami hadn’t made himself his equal, hadn’t set himself into place next to Tobirama rather than behind or below, it would have been different.

As it was, watching him get his ass handed to him by a cackling Akane was pretty entertaining and it let him admire without getting caught.

Well, at least not by Kagami himself.

“Little Amatsubu-kun’s all grown up,” Shirogane sighed, the lines on his face soft with amusement. “Fallin’ in love an’ all tha’ rot.”

Flushing, Tobirama scowled and took a swig of his sake defensively. Even with the man who had practically adopted him into the family, it was strange to speak of his emotions, to acknowledge they existed.

Watching Kagami twist over Akane’s blade with a look of panic, Tobirama distinctly ignored the Nagisa man in favor of the Uchiha’s commendable flexibility and understandable terror. He was quick and nimble, lightning and pale fire his weapons in the face of her own wind and lightning, the two crashing off of each other.

It was clear that she was playing with him, but also that he was pleasantly surprising her, if her sharp toothed grin was anything to go by.

It reminded him of his first spar with her, and his chest warmed.

The relationship he had with Akane was interesting in the fact that they didn’t feel or treat each other like siblings despite both being Shirogane’s children by blood and not. She was his best friend over anything else, and it didn’t matter how long they’d been apart or how they’d changed, things between them never had.

Kagami was his friend too, but he’d never looked at Akane and felt his heart twist up in his throat and his blood rush through his veins the way it did with him.

When he flopped down at Tobirama’s side, his Sharingan was still active, his face was flushed with exertion and he’s breathing hard. The smile he sent up at the Senju was slightly dazed but tinged with that infatuation that Tobirama wants but doesn’t know how to have.

“This place is _awesome_ Tobira!”

Smiling softly in turn, his own red eyes gleam with pleasure.

“Yes.”

Later, during fireworks from the mast of one of the Nagisa ships, the sounds of music and cheering, surrounded by the joy, and love and little bit of heartbreak that was Uzushio, Tobirama breathed.

He breathed and let Kagami kiss him a second time while the lights reflected off of curly midnight hair and lovely slanted eyes. As love soared in the young chest in front of him even as they reached for each other and fire hissed against water in beautiful agony and lightning traveled through him like laughter. He let his breath catch and the vulnerability of uncertainty be washed away by the exaltation exuded from the young man in front of him who had a death grip on his yukata.

He was twenty-five, and he wondered if this was peace.

~*~

The only thing he can think is that he’s glad that Shirogane is already dead. That he had passed away the year before and so doesn’t have to see his shame.

Doesn’t have to see his betrayal of all that he had given him, all that he had been taught.

Because Tobirama had been unable to stand up to the flat, dead look in his brother’s eyes when he’d tried to refuse him. Hadn’t been able to breath under the weight of his chakra cutting towards him, strangling him as he’d asked if he would stand in the way of Hashirama’s dream.

So instead he stood to the side, masks firmly shuttering his face so that Hashirama would not see him as the next threat. So that the brother he loved so much would not strike him down as well even as Isobu was dragged into the body of a man he didn’t know to be imprisoned. As Akane’s rage screamed across the ocean and rain poured from the thundering heavens and grief echoed in every heart.

Three quarters of the fleet was gone. Crushed under Hashirama’s power, under the weight of his _dream_.

Tobirama had known loss, had known a little of hatred, but he had never known betrayal of this kind even though he should have expected it. Madara had been holding Hashirama’s heart for so long, his dream, that his own betrayal had stripped away some of the humanity from Hashirama; left instead the God of Shinobi.

He was ice. He was frozen inside, as his brother’s hand clamped down on his arm and pulled him away from his horrified staring at the corpses in the water, at the wreckage and loss. As Akane bled out on the deck of the ship she’d been raised on by the man who had helped teach Tobirama hope.

He was so very, very cold.

When they returned to the Village, Tobirama was still in his daze. Still stiffly held apart from his treacherous heart.

Perhaps it was luck that he was in his quarters when he heard the scream.

Mito.

Her pain echoed through him, shattering the ice he’d pulled into himself, and he had just enough strength of thought to activate his privacy Seals.

It had been nearly twenty years since he’d last wept, and it hurt. It hurt.

The burn in his throat and eyes was almost foreign.

The shattering ache of this heart breaking with grief, with inconsolable emptiness and _loneliness_; that, he was despairingly familiar with.

It had been so very long since he’d last given into the urge for tears, let grief and emotion overwhelm him. Not since his brothers were buried, since Hashirama had been so _angry _with him for having given in to their father’s demands. Since it had become clear that he wasn't first in his brother’s heart the way Hashirama had been in his.

He thought he’d buried his heart with two little bodies, folded each half into tiny hands, one after another until nothing was left.

Tobirama thought he couldn’t quite know the same kind of fractured terror, that kind of desperate grief and protective haze of failure again.

Tobirama had been wrong.

Kneeling in his room coated in Seals taught to him by gentle nobles decorated with the rough acceptance of nature guided to him by roughshod sailors fill of laughter, Tobirama _felt._ His chest felt like it was cracking apart, like his ribcage should claw into his heart and fill his lungs with silt. A sensory echo of salt and brine on his tongue, of joyful choices calling to him, of gulls crying as wind pulled at his hair haunted him.

It was gone. All of it. Gone.

It would never be the same.

They might not have blamed him, but he blamed himself.

Every death, every cry of agony and loss…

He couldn’t rub out the way they’d etched their way into his heart; one simple fact of life after another into an ease, a _peace_, he had never known before. Every gentle, callused hand had given him kindness he'd never known before. Had guided him in brush strokes foreign to his militant mind, taught him softness. Every heart had beat with welcome, with love to spare. With love given so very freely.

Now they were a carving on his soul that he’d never be rid of, the screech of shattering metal under too much strain. The crying of people trapped and dying, the abrupt silence of lives cut short.

There had been children on some of those ships. Just babes. Pregnant women who had refused to abandon their families.

There had been elders and simple fishermen and merchants who had wanted to stand with their family against _his_ _brother’s_ indelible strength. While he might love his brother achingly, desperately, he’d never known what to think of his uncompromising strength if it would ever be directed at something Tobirama himself loved.

Had never thought it would be an issue.

He never thought he’d hate Hashirama’s dream in the ways he had so recently learned to.

They were gone.

They were _gone_.

_What had he done?_

When Kagami wrapped himself around Tobirama bodily he couldn’t make himself cling closer or push him away, too wild with pain. His heart was splitting in two, was shattering in ways he’d always feared it would.

Peace? There was no such thing as peace.

Tobirama was thirty and he would never know this thing he had learned to crave.

~*~

When he returned to Uzushio at their behest, he stayed outside the gates. He could not make himself enter the place that had once been more home to him than his own Clan. He could not feel their hatred as well as his own.

Kagami was a burning presence of support at his side.

He had been leading the Clan since Madara’s betrayal and had taken a wife to lead in his stead. She was a friend and in a relationship with a Kurama woman and agreed to carry him one heir.

They had discussed it before the beginning of the end.

Tobirama had never felt so fragile, but in the face of his emotional frailty Kagami was strong and _loved _him despite everything.

When she stepped out of the gates, outside the Seals that had smothered her signature, Tobirama fell to his knees.

It wasn’t the same to be held with only one arm, but it was a relief and salvation as she let him muffle his tears against her empty shoulder. Her heart was sore and weary, but it held no hate for him, only grief. She pressed her lips to his forehead and smiled tiredly, sadly.

“Come on, Amatsubu-kun, Kuroshinju-chan,” she told them, voice rough and chakra quieter than he’d ever felt it before. “Let’s go home.”

They comforted each other the best they could, and Tobirama tried to apologize to the survivors, to make amends in any way he could. They listened to him, but they held no forgiveness in their hearts because they did not _blame _him.

When Akane fell with child, the girl did not look like him, but she felt like him. Seeing the tenderness in her silvery eyes and the slow return of joy as light built up again, he said nothing.

He didn’t need heirs, and he didn’t want to lead a child astray.

Besides, Uzushio was more of a home than Konoha ever could be.

~*~

Kagami grieved him, he knew.

He could feel it still, could Sense that terrible, tearing agony of loss even as he bled out amongst the corpses of the enemy that had torn him down. Tobirama was not as strong as he’d once been, had lost some of that will to live with every Nagisa that had died at his brother’s hands. Every child who would never grow up to change the world.

He had loved and been loved.

That was something he could never regret; despite the many others he might have.

Every beat of his heart tore something further and his lungs rasped and gurgled with everything breath he took. Closing his eyes against the light of the sun, he _reached_.

There, so distant, so diminished, the Sea reached back.

Tobirama was forty-five and he stopped breathing.

~*~

Death was a fog of not remembered things but never forgetting them, though he thinks he might have finally found his peace.

Having the veil torn asunder with his own technique, something he’d come up with half mad with grief and Akane had made him promise not to try and use, was jarring. Part of him had wanted to bring back his brothers, to bring back Izuna, just to see if it would salvage anything in him. Part of him had wanted to bring back the fallen Nagisa who had fallen under the weight of a worthless dream.

“The sea gives, an’ the sea takes, jus’ as the tides come an’ go,” Akane had told him, holding her daughter in her arm. “You don’t make demands of the sea. What is, is. We will continue.”

There was no Kagami in this shade of life to bring what joy he could.

There was Saru, and old, old man attacked by a student. There was a shade of his loved/hated brother beside him. There was Danzo, imbedded with Uchiha chakra in a way that should not be. There was a single Hatake who’s chakra was entwined with someone who felt like a mixture of Tobirama and Akane’s daughter.

A Nagisa.

The Nagisa wouldn’t have come to Konoha. Would not have left the shoreline of their home if they did not have to.

There was no Song, here.

The Senju were gone, then.

The Uchiha were gone but for a scattered few who echoed with Kagami’s blood.

There was only one Uzumaki, and underneath his skin burned the Kyuubi.

He could not feel them. Uzushio. The Nagisa.

Just one. Just one of each. Half flickers of potential Uzumaki far away, weakened and entrapped. Nothing else.

Tobirama was glad that he had died before he’d had to see what Hashirama’s dream had ultimately done to the world.

Tobirama was dead, and there was no such thing as peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Saudade – Portuguese
> 
> The feeling of intense longing for a person or place you love but is now lost. A haunting desire for what is gone.


End file.
